The true story
of how defiant and brilliant young activists Alice Paul (Swank) and
Lucy Burns (O’Connor) took the women’s suffrage movement by storm,
putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to
vote.

CRITIQUE

Hesitation to
picket a wartime president. Mistreatment of prisoners. A country
deeply divided. What sounds like modern day was actually America,
circa 1914. Another president, another war, but the issues, at their
core, were strikingly similar. The women’s suffrage movement, and
indeed the entire World War I era, was a vibrant time in American
history that seems, in the dramatic sense, to be underrepresented.
The cinematic possibilities seem wide ranging, but little has come of
it. Now HBO has given us Iron Jawed Angels, a broad stroke of
a film that does well to dramatize the struggle of Alice Paul and Lucy
Burns, while hitting on other aspects of a movement that would, by the
filmmakers’ own admission, require movies in themselves to go into in
detail.

Alice and Lucy
are the focus of the story, two intelligent girls who had been around
the world and knew that America was desperately lagging in the area of
suffrage. (As we learn, England, New Zealand, Russia and other
countries all gave women the vote before America did.) They join a
women’s movement and begin to organize. This film would crumble
without strong performances from its leads, and Hilary Swank and
Frances O’Connor deliver in spades. The film’s biggest strength comes
in how it recreates the period, showing how the suffrage movement was
hindered by, among a great many other things, the fact that it was not
the day’s only pressing issue. Mainly, there was the brewing war in
Europe, America’s involvement in what would later be called World War
I. Many thought that the women should give up their picketing of
Woodrow Wilson when he became a wartime president, and the fact that
they refused only brought more trouble. The film also briefly hits on
the racial issues that touched the movement. Did “Votes For Women”
mean all women? Or just white women?

There is a
one-sidedness and a seen-it-before feeling to Iron Jawed Angels
that thickens more and more as the film rolls on. Perhaps because the
film is so broad in its depiction of the movement, the film never
moves dramatically beyond the familiar premise of a suffering group
that overcomes its oppressors. The women suffer unjustly, suffer even
more unjustly, before finally winning in the end. The men in the film
are never more than two-dimensional, cold, heartless bastards, while
the women are the long-suffering victims of male domination. There is
a third dimension missing that might have made all of the characters
more interesting. The script feels overwritten, pandering to its
audience and bludgeoning it into seeing its point of view.

It is
interesting how, in the end, Woodrow Wilson moves to grant women the
right to vote as “a necessary war measure,” which not only gives the
film a modern edge, but also shows that the vote was granted not
simply because it was the right thing to do, but because of intense
political pressure, and justified as an integral part of something
bigger. There is much of Iron Jawed Angels that makes it feel
like a modern story, not locked in its period like so many doomed
period films. The film has a familiar feeling, but it aims both
barrels at its audience and hits its targets every time.

THE VIDEO

Iron Jawed
Angels is presented in
the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The colors are crisp, and the
overall transfer is pristine. The colors look great, and the
photography of the picture – which is striking – translates
beautifully.

THE AUDIO

This DVD
presents several audio options: English 5.1, English Dolby Surround,
Spanish Dolby, and French 2.0. The presentation is sharp, and there
is great dispersal throughout. The sound editing in this film is
quite good, and the audio presentation here really brings that
through.

THE EXTRAS

Audio
commentary by director Katja Von Garnier and screenwriter Sally
Robinson: as insightful
commentary, the filmmakers talk about the making of the film, how
everything came together, and how the cinematic version relates to the
actual people and events.

This is the
only piece of bonus material. There is no trailer, no
behind-the-scenes for this well-dressed period piece, nothing beyond
the commentary track.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Iron Jawed
Angels
is a competent film about a period of American history that has never
received its share of dramatic representation, and the overall film is
good despite being a bit one sided and dramatically familiar. The
audio/video presentation is good, but the special features leave
something to be desired.